Ocean rolls on Channel Orange'

Thanks to his recent admission of a same-sex first love, Frank Ocean has vaulted from respected R&B singer (with Odd Future and a pair of his own lauded mix tapes) and songwriter (for Beyonce, Justin Bieber, John Legend and others) to pop culture sensation of the moment. If the titillation helps bring more people to “Channel Orange,” though, more’s the better. More than anything he’s done to this point, the 17-track set reveals Ocean to be a mature, thoughtful and fearless artist who’s more concerned with weighty self-examination and social commentary than about his libido — although that gets an airing here, too, but in much smaller doses than the average Chris Brown or certainly R. Kelly album. Instead, like a young Marvin Gaye, Ocean’s goal is “searching for a real love” but with a keen awareness of the distractions and obstacle the world presents in finding it. Songs such as “Super Rich Kids” (“My silver spoon has fed me good”) and “Sweet Life” (“Why see the world when you got the beach?”) address the artifice of materialism, while Ocean grapples with challenging (to say the least) relationships in “Lost,” “Monks” and the nearly 10-minute opus “Pyramids,” where his muse is a stripper whose schtick is dressing up like Cleopatra. Ocean gets help from a wealth of guests — John Mayer, Andre 3000, Odd Future cohorts Tyler the Creator and Earl Sweatshirt, Lalah Hathaway — but save for the full-on groove pop of “Lost” he keeps things musically spare here. And that’s as it should be; Ocean’s is an original voice that’s best heard with a minimum of sonic distractions.